Part Eleven
Villacana stood in his living room, as ice cold and expressionless as the glass and steel around him. Inside, he was burning, anger and frustration tearing through him.
Kearney and Travis were fools, but they were detectives, accustomed to searching for clues. What had they read of his reactions? He had almost given himself away with his questions about the weather satellite, he knew that, but the detectives' visit had unsettled him. It had been too unexpected, not part of his plan. Any intruder in the world he'd built for himself was unacceptable. The thought of them made him feel unclean, violated, as if San Fernando and everything on it was an extension of his own body. Or maybe just his territory, in the sense that predatory great cats had their territories, prowled out, kept safe and jealously guarded.
For the intrusion to come now, so close to the fruition of his plan, when he had so much to lose and so much to hide… That was just about the worst outcome that his theoretically-faultless test could have brought about.
He cursed the nameless tourist who had brought this upon him, and all his brood. Villacana had hoped finding the barely-viable bodies would help deflect attention from his island. He hadn't thought for a moment that there might be other passengers on the yacht to draw attention back here. And typical of the shipwrecked victims to be children, sure to bring bleeding hearts out here in droves.
Villacana had been waiting so long to get his revenge, to make the world that had rejected him sit up and recognise his genius once and for all. It had taken him years of hard, solitary work, sourcing each component, ensuring everything was perfect. He had thought to exploit the world-wide unease about the weather system as early as this very night. With an undetermined number of search vessels in the area, some of them small enough perhaps to pass through his perimeter system undetected, he couldn't take the chance. Who knew whether a passing boat would spy a reflection from the dish, or notice something else that had escaped his meticulous planning?
He shook his head, caught sight of himself doing so in the reflective glass of the window, and realised that his anger was slipping through even his automatically maintained mask of neutrality. Carefully, slowly, he took a deep breath, held it and released it gradually.
This was not the time to start doubting himself, or his precautions. This one incident with the sailing yacht was a fluke, a distraction, no more. Passing on the electronic call button in his wristband, he moved instead to the wall panel, running his fingers over the vid-screen and bringing up a link to his data-conduit. With a few quick commands, he isolated the records of his carefully-innocent conversation with the detectives, adding a barely-perceptible layer of white noise to it to blur even his slight vocal inflections. Downloading it to a data-card, he pulled the device from its socket, weighing it in his palm. With another sequence of commands he killed the automatic monitoring system he used to keep his servants in line, before summoning the entire household with a final sequence. He didn't want a record of this conversation.
The Islander natives trailed in, polite and reasonably clean despite their rough appearances. They lined up in front of him, their eyes averted as Villacana preferred.
Tranter was still escorting their unexpected 'guests' to the boathouse and, knowing his job, keeping them there. Friell hovered inside the door, acting as a rearguard, his eyes as cold and emotionless as his master's. Villacana had picked his two full-time servants carefully, selecting men greedy enough to tolerate his idiosyncrasies if the pay was sufficient, and as clear-sighted as he was when it came to the rest of humanity. Neither of the men knew what their master did when he vanished into his 'laboratory', and while they had helped construct the dish to his rigorous requirements, neither had doubted his statement that he merely required better communications for his work. He was certain that even if they suspected his long-concealed plan, neither of them would care.
He had never bothered to learn the names of the five men who came in every week on the boat. They were hard-eyed men, not from liberal Dominga, but rather from the more cut-throat harbour and bars of Santa Isobella. He'd selected them solely for their ability to do whatever they were told without question. Their loyalty was certain as long as it remained paid for, and was reinforced by the memory of Villacana carefully and precisely flaying the arm of the first man who had gossiped about San Fernando and its owner. He'd gained no pleasure from the messy activity, merely seen it as a necessary step to securing his goal; eight years without trouble from his employees had proved it worthwhile. In those years these men had laid paths and traps, maintained the gardens – both formal and kitchen, cleared debris after storms, carried equipment and supplies from the dock up to the house, and on one memorable occasion thoroughly beaten a pair of stray fishermen intruding on a western beach, before setting them adrift.
Only one man in this room had yet to learn the rule of absolute obedience, and was yet to prove his loyalty. The large motor yacht was a relatively new purchase, an indulgence that Villacana now vaguely regretted, but hadn't been able to resist. He had realised that hiring a new man competent to captain the vessel would be necessary. He hadn't appreciated how reluctant he would be to open even his cynical, violence-motivated circle of trust. Or how hard it would be to find a man with the required combination of skill and conscience-free, greedy obedience. He was still far from sure of his choice, a Domingan native with more concern for the rules of the sea than the rules his employer laid down.
He studied the man briefly before he extended his hand, proffering the data-card.
"There are two detectives in the boathouse. Take this to them, answer their questions, cooperate with their requirements."
"Sir." There was nothing to fault in the man's bowed head or quiet acknowledgement. Villacana waved a hand in dismissal, indicating two of his anonymous men with stabbing gestures.
"You, and you. You will be needed as boat crew. Go with him."
Villacana and his other servants watched as the captain left the room, his shoulders slightly bowed under the weight of the eyes upon him, trailed by his nominated crew. Friell slipped out behind them, escorting them to the main door of the house and securing it behind them before returning to the sitting room. There was silence for a few seconds and Villacana took a moment to enjoy the thrill of power he felt over the remaining four men, waiting on his command, ready to obey him unconditionally.
"We may have intruders on the island. Detectives aside, there are two others who may have washed ashore here. I want you to check the traps, search for any sign of unauthorised individuals on the island. My equipment and activities are not to be subject to espionage or interference. No matter who is responsible, or the cause. If anyone has washed ashore here, I want to know that was precisely what happened. That they washed in on the morning tide. I want to hand their dripping bodies over to the authorities without hesitation. Understood?"
There was just the briefest pause. This was darker than anything he'd asked of them before, but he had no doubt that they were capable of it. He stood impassive and unyielding, recognising that a ruthless attitude to others that he'd always thought of as remote and abstract was becoming very close and real.
"Go," he said simply.
They went without argument.
Scott had second, third and fourth thoughts about guiding his little brother along the path that the trip-wire had protected. In the end, he'd settled for a compromise. They kept mostly to the trees, Gordon never more than a few steps away from his eldest brother, both of them cutting cautiously back onto the flatter, clearer ground when the undergrowth became particularly rough.
The sun was in their eyes, the path leading them almost due west. It broadened gradually, and it took some time for Scott to notice that they were now sticking almost exclusively to the beaten earth track. He'd treated Gordon's blistered feet, and his own, trying to ignore his tired brother's tears as they limped onwards through the apparently never-ending jungle. They were both growing listless, walking because they had to, and not even Gordon had the energy to spare for side trips or exploration.
It was getting on for late afternoon when Scott tripped over a deep gulley in the surface of the path for the third time. He landed on hands and knees, aggravating the scrapes he'd already acquired, and stayed down, breathing hard. Gordon was at his side in seconds, tugging anxiously at his arm, and he struggled to blink back the mingled tears of pain, fear and exhaustion.
"I'm… I'm okay, Gordy. Just give me a minute."
Gordon dropped to sit beside him, hugging his knees, his worried eyes never leaving his brother's face. Scott sighed, sitting up and unrolling his pack. He pulled out food and water for his brother, letting himself swallow a mouthful or two of the cool liquid while Gordon ate hungrily. There had been a pool not far from the path a little way back, its level topped up by the recent rainfall, its bottom hidden by a layer of fallen leaves, and Scott had literally drunk until he was sick. That had taken a few minutes to recover from too, and despite the cravings of his dehydrated body, he'd sipped more cautiously before they left the pool, wary of his viciously cramping stomach.
His throat was still sore, the acidic taste not fading from the back of his mouth, even when he allowed himself a little of the bottled water to soothe it. He refused the food Gordon offered him entirely, a little surprised to realise that he really wasn't hungry. He managed a smile for Gordon's sake, knowing that his little brother was almost as alarmed by Scott's lack of appetite as his Scott himself was grateful for it. It didn't fool the younger boy.
"Scott, are you getting sick?"
Scott gave him a wan grin and a shrug. "I'm not sure, Gordon. But look, the path is getting wider. We're going to find someone soon, they're going to call Mom and she'll take you home and everything will be okay."
Gordon just looked at him, and Scott waved a hand to indicate the path they were on. He stopped, focused and frowned, actually looking at the surface for the first time. The narrow gulley he'd tripped over was worn, baked by the sun and eroded by the rain, but it was nonetheless unmistakeable.
"Tyre tracks!" Gordon jumped a mile at his brother's cry. Scott grinned at him, waving him closer. "Look, Gordy, they're tyre tracks. You can see the treads. We've got to find someone soon."
He dragged himself to his feet and picked up their ever-lightening pack, urging Gordon on. Ten minutes later, he was walking with Gordon's hand in his to encourage him when his little brother stopped suddenly, almost pulling Scott off-balance.
"Engine!" Gordon's eyes widened. "Scotty! I can hear an engine!"
Scott held his breath, closed his eyes and concentrated everything on hearing the sound his little brother had detected. Several seconds later he was breathless, but sure. Gordon was right.
Scott scanned the skies, wondering if the induction pulse had cleared enough for aircraft to fly over. He dropped the pack to his side, scrabbling for the long-forgotten flare gun, before his eyes fell once again to the tyre marks beside it. He hesitated, listening again to the sound rolling off the sides of the volcano. The engine note was wrong for a plane, now that he concentrated on it.
"There's a car coming," he realised. "A jeep, a van, something."
A small hand slipped into his, Gordon's other hand plucking at his sleeve as Scott's little brother tried to pull him aside.
"We have to get off the road, Scotty."
Scott looked down into the younger boy's frightened eyes, bemused. True, his little brothers had road safety drilled into them, but even so it seemed a strange comment. Gordon tugged at him again. "Scotty, please, there were spikes and traps and bricks… we have to hide!"
Scott felt sick, torn between two unpalatable choices as he realised his brother was right. From the moment he'd seen the trip wire, he'd realised that the people on this island would have to be approached carefully. Pulling his brother out of a pit of poisoned spikes had cemented that conviction. At the same time, his own strength was failing rapidly and he knew that, despite all his efforts, Gordon wasn't doing much better. Was the choice between turning his little brother over to someone who had already tried twice to kill them, and simply collapsing here in the jungle? Neither option was acceptable.
He thought quickly, weighing up the little they had, and the resources around them, wracking his mind desperately for a plan. He saw it in a flash of inspiration and leapt on it, knowing how little time they had from the growing roar of the vehicle engine.
He ran to the edge of the crude road, and off it into the jungle. Fallen branches and the occasional half-rotten tree trunk were common sights on the leaf-mould floor. In the first hour of their journey, Gordon had stopped at several, fascinated by the fungal growths and streaming columns of ants that colonised them. Now Scott ran desperately towards the log he'd seen from the road, counting on it being half-eaten through, grateful beyond measure when he found that solid as it looked, it was all but hollow. "Gordy, help me!" he demanded, heaving up one end of the log and beginning to drag it across the ground.
His little brother was tired, but his already well-developed love of practical jokes made him quick to see the potential in a situation like this. He grasped Scott's idea almost immediately, helping him to drag the log across the path. Scott was already dropping flat on his belly to hide in a thicket of undergrowth to one side of the rutted surface when Gordon ran back into the road with armfuls of leaves, scattering them artistically around the hollow log in a touch that would never have occurred to Scott. A close look might reveal the inconsistencies, but at first glance the obstruction looked like it had been there for weeks, the leaves gradually building up around it. He pulled Gordon into a one-armed hug as the younger boy dropped down beside him, grinning smugly.
Scott smiled at him. "You're just a little too good at that, aren't you, you little monster?"
Gordon laughed, the sound lifting his elder brother's spirits. Scott hushed him reluctantly, finger on lips as the engine noise swelled around them.
They were waiting for less than thirty seconds when the jeep came into view, its bench seat occupied by two large, bored looking men, its short truck-bed empty save for a scatter of dirt and a length of rope. The vehicle came to a halt, its engine reverberating painfully loud after the near-silence of the last day. The two men in it looked from the fallen tree blocking their path to one another and back again before the driver leaned forward against the steering wheel, resting his forehead against his arms.
"Well, get out and move it then," the man said in a thick, Domingan Islander accent.
His partner frowned, ready to complain, and thought again when the driver shifted in his seat, purposefully revealing a gun tucked into his waistband. Scott heard a small gasp beside him and reached out quickly, putting a hand over his brother's mouth and meeting his eyes anxiously.
The second man climbed out of the jeep, his entire posture screaming reluctance. He lingered for a few seconds with one foot in the cab, about to step down backwards. "Are you okay with this?" he asked, his tone deliberately nonchalant.
The driver opened one eye, looking blankly at his colleague.
"Villacana wants these people found and dealt with." He shrugged. "So, we deal with them."
The second man gave an echoing shrug, stepped down to ground level and then hesitated again. "Marshal was talking to one of the cops on that hydrofoil. Said they were looking for a couple of kids."
The driver opened both eyes, his voice cold. "You've been taking the same money I have these years. You helped last time we had intruders, and now you have a problem? You going to give up the pay? You think you can run far enough to hide when Villacana comes after you? He's cold, but the man scares the hell out of me."
The combination of threat and warning in the driver's voice was unmistakeable, and Scott held his breath as the second man thought about it. "No," he said quietly. "Guess not."
"Right, so if those kids are here, we make sure they can't tell anyone what they've seen. Ever. We hand the bodies over to the cops and it's over and done with. Right?"
"Right." The second man kicked at the log, grunting in satisfaction as his foot went through the rotten bark. He kicked it a few more times, breaking it into manageable chunks before sweeping them aside with his feet, evidently disinclined to get his hands dirty… at least not on a mouldy, fungus-crusted log. He shook his head in disgust as he climbed back into the jeep. "Hardly worth stopping for. Truck would have gone straight through it."
The driver grunted in response, throwing the vehicle into gear and forcing it through the scattered remnants of the boys' crude barricade. Lying in the undergrowth, too shocked and afraid to move, Scott listened to the engine sound slowly fading. His plan had been simply to stop the vehicle and assess the situation when he found out who was in it. Even when the jeep and its unpromising passengers had drawn up, Scott had wondered if he and Gordon could somehow hide in its truck bed.
After the conversation they'd just overheard, he was overwhelmingly relieved that they hadn't tried.
He didn't realise he still had his hand over Gordon's mouth until his little brother gave up tugging at his hand and bit him instead. He yelped, letting go and rolling up to a sitting position, Gordon beside him. His brother looked as shocked as Scott himself felt, and he knew that despite the men's oblique speech, he didn't have to explain. He worked his mouth for several seconds, coughing to clear his raw throat, before he managed to speak.
"Okay, Gordy. New plan. That jeep left tracks we could follow with our eyes closed. Wherever they come from, there has to be food, water, a radio maybe, or even a boat. We get there and call for help and, Gordy, this is really important, we don't let anyone catch us!"
Gordon climbed tiredly to his feet, holding out a hand to help pull Scott up.
"Okay," he agreed quietly.
Travis stepped from the motor yacht back onto the police hydrofoil with the ease of a born and raised Domingan. It was hardly possible to grow up in the Confederation without spending time on the ocean, and in other circumstances he might have enjoyed the cool breeze and the gentle swell. Eight hours into the search operation, with no sign of the missing boys, this was not the time.
Their frustrating visit to San Fernando over, with nothing constructive to do and reluctant to take a boat from the search to return to Dominga, he and Kearney had spent the rest of the day boat-hopping. They'd spoken to the various captains and crews both about the storm and to canvas opinion on the best strategy to search for the Santa Anna's boat. The verdict had been pretty unanimous all around – the storm may have been compact and short-lived, but its effects had been fierce, and the coastguard's decision to define a search area and distribute the helping vessels through it couldn't really be improved upon.
When the wreckage of the Santa Anna itself had been relocated, around about noon, the strategy had been proven sound, but the mood turned darker. If he hadn't known what it was, Travis could never have believed that the trail of matchbox-sized debris could amount to a family-sized sailing yacht. The largest pieces, fragments of the wooden cabin, were the size of a small tabletop. The hull had long-since dissolved into fibreglass splinters. Travis tried not to see the more human debris: twists of sodden clothing, sheets of water-bleached paper and even a few books. It was mute testimony to the force of the storm, and Villacana's Captain Gardner was able to confirm that even in the twenty-four hours or so since he'd last seen the debris field, it had spread and broken up further.
Finding it had been the high point of the search. There had been not a glimpse of the lifeboat, or a smaller debris trail that might suggest its fate. With Travis beside him in the wheelhouse of Villacana's yacht, Captain Gardner had explained grimly that most likely a dinghy of that kind would leave no visible evidence, capsizing or sinking intact when it was swamped, rather than breaking up.
Travis waved as he left the numbered-but-nameless yacht behind him. As Cal Levan had told him, Gardner was a good man, and deserving of a better employer. Travis hadn't failed to notice how carefully the captain had made sure his crew were busy at the other end of the boat before answering any of the detective's questions, or how nervously he glanced up at an electronic eye in the wall of the wheelhouse. Gardner wasn't just impressed by Villacana; he was scared of the man, and the length of his reach.
Kearney leant a hand to steady his fellow detective as Travis adjusted from the rock-solid weight of the motor yacht to the far lighter, more mobile hydrofoil. He accepted a water bottle gratefully, glancing up at Kearney as he did so. His colleague had picked up a touch of the sun, his genetically pale skin more vulnerable than Travis's own tanned complexion.
Kearney looked tired and as grimly demoralised as Travis felt. He tilted his head, looking up at the motor yacht they were now leaving behind them. "Did he say much more?"
Travis shook his head, sighing and dropping onto one of the bench seats lining the sides as the hydrofoil picked up speed. "Not a lot. Villacana spends a lot of time in the basement – some kind of private electronics lab the servants are barred from. He's working on some big project. Beyond that, Gardner's learnt not to ask questions."
"Yeah," Kearney dropped down beside him, echoing his sigh. "That's about all I got out of him earlier. Just about the only thing he volunteered was that it was a pure fluke they found Tracy and Virgil at all. Villacana apparently isn't much of a one for enjoying the wilder side of things so the captain was surprised when he decided to go for a cruise just after a storm." He shook his head and there was silence for a few minutes as both men weighed up what they'd learnt during the day. Kearney sighed, looking at Travis' tired face. "We knew this search was going to take a while."
"I know," Travis agreed, leaning his head back against the ship's rail and tilting his face up to the late-afternoon sun. It felt strange to be leaving the search with the sun high in the sky, but some of the tourist boats joining the search had come out with more community spirit than common sense, and most of them were going to be spending the night on the open water. The coastguard coordinators had asked the fast police vessel to make a run back to Dominga for a few more light buoys and additional drinking water before darkness made hydrofoil speeds hazardous. Travis was more than glad to be going with it. "It's just been a hell of a long day, and I feel as if we've got nowhere."
"Well, we know the kids aren't on San Fernando." Kearney offered before sighing and leaning back against the rail himself. "Although I guess that doesn't really help, does it?"
The hydrofoil flew across the water, cruising at a steady hundred-twenty knots. Sea-spray was flung up around them in a fine mist, the vessel appearing to sail homewards through a shifting rainbow of refracted light.